SEKIREI ~Pure Engagement~ – 03

After the “Kazehana GET!” from Minato in the preview last time, it’s no surprise that he adds the Wind Sekirei to his collection this episode. What was a bit of surprise was how he won her over, by doing whatever he could to try and protect her. Compared to the first season when Minato was a bit clueless about the whole Sekirei Project and let the girls protect him, I think he’s come a fair way in terms of manning up in any situation, even when it involves the likes of Benitsubasa and Haihane. It’s still hard to see his attempts to protect his Sekirei as anything more than reckless and suicidal, but I can understand where he’s coming from after witnessing Musubi get “killed” before his very eyes during the bridge escape. It’s pretty safe to say that Minato’s not trying to be a hero nor does he even think he can win. He just doesn’t want to see his Sekirei getting hurt like he hasnightmaresabout and would rather suffer in their place after realizing how painful that is. When I look at things from that perspective, it’s hard to see Minato as some “wimpy male lead”. For any series that’s harem-esque in nature like this one, where Minato currently has five of the most powerful Sekirei and one more on the way, it’s always nice to see that he isn’t a completely useless guy that’s undeserving of their affection. At some level, this is intended to be a love story after all, so moments where Minato can act cool and win over his Sekirei that way is always welcome in my eyes.

Production-wise, this series continues to look pretty impressive even during the quick fight sequences. It doesn’t look like any major shortcuts were taken for the characters’ faces during any of them, as they tend to be what suffer the most in such cases. Super-deformedcharacter designs look like they’re being used more frequently to bring out the humor in a lot of scenes too, which is something I always enjoy seeing in any series. As for the humor itself, I don’t recall Haihane ever being this funny in the first season, but she’s turning out to be a hilarious manzai partner for Benitsubasa. From everything to worrying about recording her TV shows to getting drunk in a pile of sake that Minato tackled her into, watching Haihane repeatedly stab herself in the head turned out to be one of the funniest moments. I don’t recall ever hearing Saiga Mitsuki voice a drunk character either, but she sure made Haihane a lot of fun to watch here. I wasn’t expecting Minato’s mother Takami (Itou Miki) to be so funny as well, teasing Tsukiumi about calling her “Okaa-sama”, but that proved to be a nice change-up from the somewhat serious turn the story took in that scene. Seeing Tsukiumi in tears with Minato trying to restrain her amused me to no end.

In general, the jokes seem to be much more abundant in this sequel and make the series a lot more fun to watch because of them. They don’t seem to take away from the plot either, as the mysterious appearance of Yume in Musubi after her Sekirei crest was erased is finally being looked into. It helps that Minato’s mother has finally told him that she works for M.B.I as a researcher and not a pharmaceutical company like he’s always believed, since Musubi didn’t seem quite like herself when talking to Karasuba about how Benitsubasa and Haihane have been spurred on to fight her. She didn’t seem quite like Yume either, leaving me wondering exactly what’s up with Musubi. Apparently, Karasuba’s goal in all this is to try and make Musubi awaken as an even stronger Sekirei than Yume was. Yume was the leader of the second generation Disciplinary Force, so I can’t help but wonder if there’s something Karasuba wants to prove by defeating her as the current leader of the third generation one. The way she’s going around and taking out Sekirei indiscriminately with extremely severe wounds (a Level 4 severity rating out of 5) seems like her way of coping with her restlessness in the meantime.

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see if she’s really after a fight with Yume later one, while Kazehana distracts everyone with her “hadaka apron” (naked apron) appearance for now. Uzume hasn’t gotten a lot of focus just yet, but it looks like that’s going to change soon since she continues to get blackmailed with Chiho’s well-being. Dealing with the northern Sekirei such as Minato’s seems to be part of her orders and she has Kazehana in a bit of a precarious position at the moment, making for a good cliffhanger. Unfortunately, the preview ruins the suspense of it by showing Kazehane no worse for wear.

I’d say they are following pretty close to the manga in some areas but I like how they are going with the series so far when it leads to actual battles and winging of the Sekirei. And I love it when Tsukuimi gets more screen time. She’s my fav after all! I know what’s going to happen next in the show more or less and it will be interesting to see how they play it out.

I think they plan to stick to the manga from now on as they worked rather hard to get the story back on track with the manga. There wouldn’t be any reason for them to do that if they planed to just run off with their own story.

That’s what they tend to do a lot of the time for anime based on manga that isn’t finished yet. They stick with the original manga story up until they start getting close to where it cuts off and then they may start to deviate a bit like they did with the end of Season 1, thus why they had to make the beginning of Season 2 and Kazehana’s winging a bit different from the manga.

When they finally do reach that point, the following tends to happen…

1.) To Be Continued (like Season 1 did); wait for another season while the manga churns out more chapters and creates a big enough gap for the series to continue another season and keep most faith to it with minimal changes to make up for how things may have deviated at the end of the previous season, if anything at all.

2.) Similar to 1, but rather than ending it, they make a bunch of filler arcs to keep people interested until they can actually continue the story or at least do so in the middle of the season (like Naruto, Bleach, etc) and also let the manga dish out more chapters so they don’t catch up to it too quickly as, for example depending on the length of manga chapters, 1 anime episode like Naruto can use up to 3 chapters at a time.

3.) They end up having to make their own original “ending”. A lot of series tend to fall prey to this like Inuyasha (for a while), Claymore, Elfen Lied, Kampfer, To-Love-Ru, etc.

I wonder if the anime will outpace the manga before we get to the end of this season. They really aren’t too far away from catching up to the manga. They will probably milk his winging his 6th for 2 episodes and the business with Uzume will play out for a couple episodes as well. That still leaves 1/2 a season unless they are gonna add some anime original material.

But they have already used up 3 episodes, so I don’t think we can expect them to progress too far realy. We aren’t at a good end point in the manga yet either, so they don’t have any reason to skip ahead to an ending.

I don”t understand what’s going on. I think I’ll have to marathon the first season again to understand this whole war thing. It’s been a while since I saw the last season. If there’s another way, please let me know. I remember enough of the first season. Just not the technical stuff about the Sekirei’s war and who’s fighting who for what reason..

” Unfortunately, the preview ruins the suspense of it by showing Kazehane no worse for wear. ” <- Divine,that line really cracked me up, especially when i saw the preview. So it looks like Homura is next on the to-wing list…,he/she(?) is getting more feminine every minute it seems.

I don’t know where some of you are getting the notion that the anime is going to catch up to the manga… there’s all the jinki gathering stuff coming up right? That’s going to provide lots of fighting time.

As for the cliffhanger I didn't "feel" it. Uzume is my second favorite sekirei and since season 1 she had plenty of chances of taking down any of the girls and didn't. so when Kazehana mark was exposed I kept my faith on Uzume. I haven't read the manga but I wish Minato wing Uzume too once the baddies kill her ashikabi. just wishfull thinking though.